Review: Half Pints' Demeter's Harvest Wheat Wine

Every winter, Half Pints Brewing releases a seasonal to help with the winter blues. Usually, it is their popular Burly Wine beer. However, they decided to discontinue the beer for at least a few years. To replace this delicious wintertime beer, they introduced Demeter's Harvest Wheatwine. I have never had a wheatwine beer in my life, so I'm quite interested in trying it.

Demeter's Harvest comes in 650mL bottle, has an ABV of 11% and IBU of 75. How will this wheatwine compare with my favourite barley wine?

Appearance: Pours a very rich hazy honey/caramel reddish-brown. It doesn't seem to have much foam, it's minimal with a bit of off-white.

Aroma: This is a very sweet beer, I tried to review this for the last hour, but managed to spill some of the wheat wine on me, as well as the review was completely lost, so here I am re-reviewing it. Very sweet, rich amount of hops. Half Pints' never is skimpy on the hops, so the aroma is making me salivate. You really can notice the honey in the aroma, as this beer has a good amount of honey in it. So for vegans out there - DO NOT try this beer. Honey lovers, come on down! There's a good amount of citrus in the aroma, I think pineapple. This reminds me of sitting on a hot beach down south. Lucky for my parents, they're heading to Roatan in a few weeks... lucky.

Taste: Wow, a very sweet beer. I can taste the honey immediately. I'm honestly not a fan of honey, but part of this beer.. wow, it's delicious! I also notice a rich amount of citrusy hops (a bit of grapefruit), all in all, a very sweet tasting beer. I've tried a lot of beers from Half Pints since 2006 (first being a (too hoppy for me) German beer), and this seems like a beer that you could use as a barbecue glaze for chicken or pork. Licking my lips, it reminds me of eating wings, it's that sweet, honey, citrusy, hoppy.

Overall Thoughts: It's a pricey beer at $10 for a 650mL bottle, but that being said, it's tellement délicieuse, cbonne! Degustez-ça! Damned sweet, damned good! Quite a honeyish beer, strong in ABV at 11%, so you will get warm, in time for a very cold, very long Manitoban winter, but thankfully this winter has been... fairly mild, by Manitoba standards. Unfortunately distribution of this beer is fairly low. You can't get this in Brandon, but you can get it at the brewery and a few MLCC's in Winnipeg (but it's likely gone by now). Get it if you can. Thanks to Grant (well his sister moreso than him ;) ) for picking some up for me, or else I would have never gotten to try this sweet nectar of a beer. Compared to Burly Wine, I don't know which one I like more, if it were up to me, both would be around at Christmas time! I think I may enjoy Demeter's Harvest slightly more than Burly Wine, because of the rich & hoppy sweetness.

From the label: Demeter, goddess of the harvest, is the inspiration for this Wheatwine from Half Pints Brewing Company. A base of malted wheat, barley and wildflower honey celebrate the fruit of the land, while Centennial and Columbus hops lend their firmly citrus undertones to the finish of this beer. As we all know, the gods can be vengeful at times, so share this extra strong ale amongst friends, served in brandy glasses at 10C. Try it with Vietnamese Fresh Rolls with a spicy peanut sauce, aged French Goat's Cheese or Duck a l'orange."

Cody Lobreau

Welcome to BeerCrank.ca! I'm a bit obsessed about craft beer, especially Canadian craft beer so I mainly review Canadian beer but I love to try beer from all over the world as well. My goal is to help influence the casual beer drinker to go out and expand their beer palate one way or another. Feel free to send some feedback!
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